Intersecting hazards, intersectional identities: A baseline Critical Environmental Justice analysis of US homelessness

Abstract

Lacking access to stable shelter, infrastructure, and services, houseless people are exposed to a range of environmental hazards. Yet, environmental justice scholars have only begun to consider how environmental justice issues impact unsheltered people. In dialogue with Critical Environmental Justice Studies and geographies of homelessness research, and drawing on seven years of participant observation and a national phone survey of 47 houseless community representatives, this paper begins to chart a baseline Critical Environmental Justice analysis of homelessness. I argue that understanding the environmental justice experiences of houseless people requires attention not only to direct exposure to hazards, but also to criminalization. Police sweeps in downtown and residential areas push people into toxic spaces; when houseless communities express concerns, they risk further eviction. In this way, cities overwhelmingly respond to hazard exposure with displacement, creating a cycle of criminalization, dangerous living conditions, and serial forced removals. Moreover, examining such intersecting hazards and their impacts through a Black feminist lens of intersectionality reveals how systemic violence vis-à-vis environmental hazards is multiplied and magnified for houseless people along lines of race, gender, age, disability status, and so on. By bringing Critical Environmental Justice and geographies of homelessness into conversation, with particular attention to intersectional impacts, scholars and organizers can better attend to the complex suite of issues that differentially shape the lives of houseless people and inspire resistance.

Air Pollution-Related Health Impacts on Individuals Experiencing Homelessness: Environmental Justice and Health Vulnerability in Salt Lake County, Utah

“…One of the primary rationales for undertaking these research questions was that there has to date been very little empirical research on homelessness and environmental health. This dearth of research is both noteworthy and problematic given that so much of the lived experience of homelessness is spent living in and among spaces that are fundamentally affected by environmental conditions; in other words, homelessness is largely associated with being outdoors [23,26,30,[43][44][45].…”

“…Environmental justice approaches to homelessness require that researchers, advocates, activists, stakeholders, and policy makers not only document and understand the spatial distribution of "environmental bads" [63], but that we also interrogate the historical and contemporary social and political systems at play that lead to disparate environmental and human health outcomes [25]. With our findings of nearly 90% of IEHs noticing air pollution and 89% seeking medical support for air pollution-related health concerns, it becomes imperative that we begin to more fully reckon with the developing proposition [23][24] that homelessness is an environmental justice concern.…”

“…Currently, there is a significant lack in research regarding the differential exposure experienced by vulnerable and at-risk groups, specifically individuals experiencing homelessness. The specific aim for this study was to test for disparities in exposure to air pollution among the population of individuals experiencing both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in Salt Lake County, and to understand how the duration of homelessness affected a criminalization, eviction, stigmatization, and marginalization) are often antecedent causal factors in IEH's spatial displacement and being pushed further into toxic spaces [23]. More pointedly, IEHs are often positioned as an environmental problem to be solved, in turn dehumanizing individuals themselves as a supposed environmental disamenity [26,30].…”

Air Pollution-Related Health Impacts on Individuals Experiencing Homelessness: Environmental Justice and Health Vulnerability in Salt Lake County, Utah

“…While homelessness has long been a concern of sociological, psychological, epidemiological, economic, and health researchers, it has only recently been explored as a topic of environmental justice [ 23 , 24 ]. Environmental justice research and scholarship contends that exposures to pollution and other environmental risks are unequally distributed by a variety of social markers, with particular emphasis on race and class [ 25 ].…”

“…Simultaneously, and increasingly for those facing unsheltered homelessness, difficult environmental conditions associated with everything from basic seasonality to extreme weather events and disasters can have dire implications for health and resilience [ 16 , 27 , 28 , 29 ]. However, recent critical work illustrates that sociopolitical experiences (e.g., criminalization, eviction, stigmatization, and marginalization) are often antecedent causal factors in IEH’s spatial displacement and being pushed further into toxic spaces [ 23 ]. More pointedly, IEHs are often positioned as an environmental problem to be solved, in turn dehumanizing individuals themselves as a supposed environmental disamenity [ 26 , 30 ].…”